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Blue Ridge Biofuels Offers Local Cooking Oil and Biodiesel

7/28/2015

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What started out as a small group of people looking to make fuel for their own purposes has expanded into a large operation that distributes locally grown oils, sells biodiesel at fueling stations, and pays top dollar for used cooking oils from restaurant fryers.

The concept for Blue Ridge Biofuels started simply enough with a few folks who just wanted to create their own biodiesel to power their trucks and farm equipment. The idea resonated with enough people throughout the region that they now sell their biodiesel and heating oil blends at several fueling stations in the western part of North Carolina.


Leading Green Distributing’s management insists that the entire fleet of diesel trucks run on a biodiesel blend, and Blue Ridge Biofuels is the provider much of the time. A map of the biodiesel pump locations can be found here.

http://www.blueridgebiofuels.com/pump-locations


The cooking oils that Blue Ridge Biofuels offers are a special commodity as well. They have partnered with Ag Strong to source canola and sunflower oil from regional farmers in the southeast who press the seeds into oil. Their canola oils and sunflower oils are sought by chefs in the Leading Green Distributing routes for salads, sauteing, and deep frying. Blue Ridge Biofuels buys the finished oil for distribution, and Leading Green Distributing fills the restaurant orders and delivers their oil.


Due to continually increasing demand, Blue Ridge Biofuels is in the process of moving their manufacturing facility to Catawba county to a biodiesel plant that was built by the county with the assistance of ASU. Brandon Greenstein, the Client Services Recruiter notes “We are going to have the capacity to increase our production by about 10 times. The ability to meet that capacity will depend on their ability to collect enough cooking oil. We are collecting used cooking oil from restaurants, and we pay for it at varying rates based on how much they produce, its quality, how clean it is.” Then they process that reclaimed restaurant oil into biodiesel.


Currently Blue Ridge Biofuels collects oil from 600 restaurants in western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, southern Virginia, and northern South Carolina. Charlotte is their next frontier as they look to increase their capacity for processing recycled cooking oil into fuel.


A map of the region where Blue Ridge Biofuels buys recycled cooking oil is here.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zOuiDT8sg2J0.krT8FQZOPjys


The process is a three way cycle of supporting farmers, supporting manufacturing, and supporting restaurant recycling. Greenstein adds, “We support the regional farmers who are growing this oil, growing the seed, pressing the oil locally with no chemicals. This is non-GMO oil. We are selling it to restaurants in the region, collecting that oil back from the restaurants, turning it back into biodiesel, and then selling it back to the farmers who are growing the seed.”


Blue Ridge Biofuels are base-line distributors of the cooking oil. They do not sell directly to restaurants, but do sell to second-tier distributors, such as Leading Green Distributing, who sell to restaurants.


For a complete list of Blue Ridge Biofuels’ oil that Leading Green offers, please check our website for a current list of products.

http://www.leadinggreendistributing.com/available-this-week.html


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Can Amsterdam's e-trikes Revolutionize the City's Food System?

11/18/2014

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The Importance of Local Food Systems

6/22/2014

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In a recent TEDx talk in Knoxville, Tennessee Chad Hellwinckel explained the importance of local food across the United States and the Southeast. The overarching theme was that the agricultural system that we know today is not sustainable. It depends on cheap fuel mostly in the form of refined oil, and there is a large mountain of evidence suggesting we are on the downward slope for petroleum extraction.

On average about 40 years is required to bring a newly found and drilled oil field to reach peak production. After the rate of oil extracted from the deposit has reached its maximum flow, the volume of oil that can be retrieved from the field drops year after year. The graph below shows the amount of oil discovered each(bar chart) and the volume of oil pumped from the ground each year (smooth curve). Based on historical trends scientists have found a way to predict how much oil will be discovered in the future.
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In short, the amount of oil left in the ground is declining while the amount of oil Americans and humans across the planet consume is rising. As less oil is pumped from the ground, but demand rises (as it’s done every year since the Industrial Revolution began) prices will rise too. Because little of our food is grown in backyards and towns anymore, the price for a bunch of carrots has the cost of the fuel to ship the vegetable across the continent built in.

The amount of fuel energy required to transport produce has risen many fold over the past 90 years. In 1920 one unit of energy burned on the farm produced three units of caloric value in the corresponding harvest. Food grown on a 1920 farm tended to be eaten within a few miles or at the resident farm house. Fast forward to 2010, we now burn one calorie of fuel for every calorie the farm produces. Add to that the cost of shipping produce from California to North Carolina. After refrigerated transportation energy requirements are included, seven units of petroleum based energy are used to produce one unit of food energy.
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If our supply of oil were infinite and the atmosphere could handle unlimited amounts of carbon dioxide without global temperatures being affected, this imbalance would not be so bad. Our oil demands could continue to grow at an exponential rate. Because we are inside a system with a finite amount available to extract, the food system is not sustainable in its current form. We must move towards consuming food grown close by.

If the graph above accurately depicts oil’s supply and demand, we have entered the peak. Despite some unpredictable variations, gasoline and diesel prices are guaranteed to rise. The question is not if, but when.

We can address the problem preemptively or wait until economics dictate the time for a solution.

In 1990 when the USSR dissolved, Cuba was abruptly left without its key trading partner. Overnight it experienced peak oil and had to adapt quickly. Almost overnight Cubans went from a diet of 3000 calories to 2000. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds of body weight by 1993. Looking to solve their unexpected food crisis, the country had to relearn how to grow its own food with little oil input. By 1998, the Cubans were gaining weight again.
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The US can wait until fuel prices begin rising sharply before addressing the problem. There will be shocks and hunger for years with this option, but necessity will dictate that we find a new method of bringing produce to the table. The problem will be solved in time once we get hungry. Or, using our capacity to predict future outcomes based on previous data, we can decide to solve this looming problem before grocery store shelves go barren.

So what do we do now? In North Carolina, it is possible to grow greens all winter long with minimal resources. It is time we start growing more of our own food in our backyards. It is time to begin supporting our local farmer. It takes years to learn how to farm and garden well. It takes longer to move a small farm into full production. We can start now and go through the growing pains in the comfort of a multi-year buffer. Or we can re-experience what happened to Cuba and realize the urgency sensed on an empty stomach.


If you want to deliberately support the sustainable food movement in North Carolina, you might want to consider using Leading Green Distributing to help partner local farms with your home, grocer or restaurant.

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems." ~Mahatma Gandhi
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September 23rd, 2012

9/23/2012

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This article was originally published by the Institute of Food Technologies.
http://www.ift.org/about-us.aspx

The study, conducted by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA/AMS), details how these organizations help local and regional producers overcome bottlenecks in the food marketing system through collaborative and transparent planning and adherence to a shared set of operating principles. March 20, 2012

A new study, entitled Moving Food Along the Value Chain: Innovations in Regional Food Distribution, reports on the distribution practices of eight producer networks and their partners distributing locally or regionally-grown food to retail and foodservice customers and it reveals how these networks tap into the growing commercial demand for local and regional food products while creating additional economic opportunities and expanding healthy food access.

The study, conducted by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA/AMS), details how these organizations help local and regional producers overcome bottlenecks in the food marketing system through collaborative and transparent planning and adherence to a shared set of operating principles. By sharing lessons learned and best practices, the new study serves as a resource for producers, food processors, and marketers organizing to supply local and regional food products to commercial customers.

To compile the report, AMS studied eight network models over a three-year period. AMS looked at network organization, product branding and labeling, infrastructure management, and price negotiation.

The report identified four factors that influenced performance across all the case studies: 

  • The amount and timing of investments made in infrastructure are vital to the success and survival of food value chains;
  • Preserving the identity of growers on product labels is critical for connecting with consumers, distinguishing the product from the competition and providing traceability;
  • Informal farmer networks can offer additional flexibility for suppliers and buyers and allow food value chains to be highly responsive to the shifting demands of specialty food markets; and 
  • For-profit businesses, nonprofits, and cooperatives all have unique strengths. By partnering with each other within food value chains, they can leverage organizational competencies and reduce the risk of failure.
Download the complete report

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